


End of the World '10

by Odyle



Category: Big Bang Theory
Genre: Community: sheldon_penny, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-02
Updated: 2011-05-02
Packaged: 2017-10-18 21:31:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 3,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/193513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Odyle/pseuds/Odyle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of ficlets written for the doomsday race during the Sheldon_Penny 2010 Paradox-o-rama.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Gamma Ray Burst

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: "Gamma Ray Burst"

**Gamma Ray Burst**

She is seated next to him on the couch playing Halo when it happens. He remembers because it was the first night that he let her sit close enough that sometimes their elbows brushed as she contorted, taking him out with another head shot.

For weeks afterwards, the astronomical community won't come out and admit to it. When someone at CHANDRA blows the whistle, it is all over the news the day after. Penny asks Raj about it over dinner in Sheldon and Leonard's apartment, but even after a few drinks, Raj won't talk. She brought over liquor in hopes that it would smooth things over, but Raj, Howard, and Leonard seem to only be focused on forgetting that the world is ending by racing to the bottom of a bottle.

Penny corners Sheldon in the kitchen once Raj is passed out on the couch, Howard is passed out on the floor, and Leonard is curled up in the arm chair snoring.

"Is the world really ending?" Penny asked him as he rinsed out the empty bottles.

"In the most simplistic of terms, the Gamma Ray Burst has destroyed the ozone layer and we are all going to bake and suffocate to death. It will not happen quickly, but it will happen."

"What's your emergency plan?"

"There is no emergency plan for an event such as this. Underfunding of NASA has meant that humanity has no refuge in space, only this one little planet."

"So there is nothing we can do?"

"Some would suggest that you enjoy life as much as possible. I believe the old saying "eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die" applies to this situation."

Penny fiddled with one of the bottles he had set in the drying rack, working her nail beneath the label to pull it off.

"Sheldon?" She asked.

"Penny?" He turned toward her and she leaned in to kiss him on the cheek.


	2. Riots

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "Riots"

He sees her for the first time in years in the paper. She's on the front page in the picture accompanying the headline "WATER RIOTS INTENSIFY AS RESERVES DIP EVEN LOWER".

Water has always been a problem in southern California. The land was never meant to support so many people. The state should have expected the riots when they decided to cut off the water to less desirable parts of the Los Angeles metropolitan area. There were a lot of people who couldn't afford to move out of the city to places that had enough water for all, or move into more affluent areas to which the water hadn't been cut.

The block their apartment sat on in Pasadena had fallen into a district without water, and they had quickly moved out of the now cursed apartment to a much more expensive apartment where they had no fear of being without water. They had invited Penny along, but she had shrugged it off. Now their old apartment was in one of the sectioned off blocks of Pasadena. The municipal authorities had started cutting power to the sectioned off blocks, claiming that they were trying to head off a brownout of the entire grid. Some say that they did it to stop people from tweeting or blogging about living conditions in the blocks that had been denied water. They haven't talked to her in weeks or seen her in even longer, since the police started enforcing a curfew in the areas of the city without water.

Penny looks tired and unwashed. He can't help but to cringe at how dirty she looks, possibly dirtier if he weren't wearing a bandanna on top of her head. She's seated against the remains of a burned out wall with two other rioters, a young black man and a little girl who appears to be his sister. She's handing a can of Pepsi to the little girl as her brother watches on. There is a beer bottle with a rag stuffed in the top and a lighter beside it between Penny's legs. The caption bills her as simply 'a rioter', and the article makes no mention of her name though it does inform him that the president has ordered a thousand troops into the county to stop the riots and force peace on the city by any means necessary. He replaces the next ten minutes of his morning routine with an upset call to his mother, chiding her for voting for this man who is sending military into the city to fight Penny and the people like her.

Until he saw the picture, he had hoped that she had made it out of the city. Even now, Leonard is making noise about packing up and moving to a university in Europe in a country with plenty of water. As a master of passive aggressive tactics, Sheldon doesn't appreciate Leonard's dropping hints and leaving guides to conversational German all over the apartment. Even if Leonard leaves, Sheldon knows when he sees Penny on that page that he can't leave. They will never find each other again if he leaves the city.


	3. Blackout

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Blackout

The blackout led her manager to tell the entire wait staff to go home. No one was sure what happened, but there was no way to cook the food without electricity, and there was no hope of getting any of that back. The streets were full as she drove home. All of the stoplights were down. Some intersections had been taken over by cops and others by a battle of wills from the opposing lanes.

Penny didn't even stop in her apartment when she got home, but instead knocked on the door to 4A to see who was home. There was shuffling behind the door which then opened a tiny crack to reveal Sheldon holding his Cylon toaster, ready to bludgeon any intruders with it.

"What're you going to do to me with that? Toast me to death?"

"That would require electricity. At the moment it is more like a big metal brick I can use for self defense. Looting is a considerable problem at times like these, Penny."

"Who's gonna want to steal your collection of Thunderbirds DVDs, Sheldon?"

He clamped the toaster tight to his chest and undid the chain keeping the door from opening completely.

"A burglar with an interest in marionettes, aviation, the Cold War... Take your pick."

"Whatever, Sheldon. I came over to see if you had a telescope I could borrow."

"May I ask why?"

"All the lights in the city are out. I sort of want to just go look at the stars and see them how I used to see them on clear nights on my grandpa's farm."

Sheldon took some time to process this. He locked the door behind her and took his weapon back to the kitchen, taking care not to plug it in just yet.

"Well?" Penny asked.

"I have a telescope take you can take up to the roof, but only under my supervision. I will, of course, have to show you the proper set up techniques and point out the astronomical bodies of note."

"Sounds like a date."


	4. Terraforming Failure

The watchtower stood high over the plains where the terraforming machines were hard at work. Penny lounged in her chair, her feet propped up on the rarely used control panel as she read People and sipped her mid-morning coffee. It was a sweet gig all in all. Three years at a time out here on the colony supervising the terraforming machines as they did whatever they did. There wasn't even anything highly technical she had to learn, just how to switch the behemouth machines on and off and how to spot surface problems with the terraforming. It did get a bit lonely, but they kept her in a much alcohol and Skype as she could ever want, and the pay was appallingly good. Three years on this watchtower and she would have enough money to act without getting paid for the next decade, not that she planned on going unpaid for that long.

"Tower Sigma, do you copy?" asked a voice over the comm.

Penny sighed and put her coffee cup down. It was Sheldon Cooper, the area scientist and busy body. None of the technicians, like herself, were trained in how to read the terraforming reports that her computer constantly put out, so once a week or so the area scientist would come around and check that nothing had gone awry. Sheldon Cooper had arrived on the planet two weeks ago and was already a pain in her side. The loneliness must've been getting to her, because even as he lectured her about not putting her coffee cup on top of the delicate instrument panel, she had been thinking of pinning him to that panel and doing things that the company would frown upon.

"This is Tower Sigma reporting."

"Tower Sigma, I'll be docking with you in approximately five minutes and twenty seconds for inspection."

"Okay, Sheldon," she said and took another sip of coffee.

"Do you have the seismic reports ready for me?"

Penny looked at the mound of print on the floor that the machine spit out continuously. A week's worth of seismic activity lay in a heap. Five minutes was enough time to have them folded up and ready for him to pour over.

"Yeah, they're ready. Dock when you get here. Tower Sigma out."

Penny put her copy of people in her chair and carried her coffee cup down to the kitchen on the floor below. She was just finishing putting the day's pile of reports in order when Sheldon appeared in the observation room.

"What's up?"

"I'm here to look at the seismic reports for the last week. Did you already forget?"

"No," Penny rolled her eyes and picked up her copy of people. There was only one chair in the observation room and he always insisted on having it. "I was being polite, asking you have you've been doing recently."

"Working," Sheldon answered, already focused on the reports.

He worked in silence as she read her magazine. The mechanical grind of the terraforming machines outside was barely audible over the whisper as he looked through the papers.

"This can't be right," he muttered to himself and flipped back a few pages to look over the data again. When he flipped back to look over it for a third time, Penny closed her magazine.

"What is it?"

"The drilling has cracked the core of the planet. None of the projections suggested it was this brittle. We need to stop drilling immediately."

"Or what?"

"Or else the planet will splinter into chunks of rock."

"Fuck," she hissed and hit the emergency stop.


	5. Vampires v. Werewolves

She could hear them chasing after her. Their nails clacked on the pavement as they ran and their panting echoed in the streets. Still new to this whole vampire thing, she wasn't yet capable of many of the vampire abilities which would have normally helped an older vampire out of such a situation. Penny wanted, namely, the power to fly. Being the undead really hadn't helped her physical fitness any.

When she saw a ladder dangling from a fire escape, she jumped on it, scurrying up the ladder, and hoping that they were stuck in their werewolf forms. Penny would be the first to admit that she knew even less about werewolves than she did about vampires, something she would be changing when she made it home to her apartment and the all knowing Google. Safe on the first landing, Penny pulled the ladder up after herself and locked it back into place. Below, the werewolves circled, seemingly unsure of what to do. They howled and a few of the littler ones jumped for the metal grating of the landing where she stood, but none of them made it.

"Suck it, furballs!" She screamed before climbing up the next ladder. The fire escape led all the way to the roof, so there had to be a roof access that she could get into the building by. A cab wouldn't come and get her with a werewolf pack lurking, so she would have to find a kind soul to let her sleep in their home or a janitorial closet with weak locks. Neither was an attractive option, but that was the glamorous reality of being a young vampire.

There was someone on the roof when she made it up. He was on the other side, peering into a telescope that was pointed out toward the sea. The man was slight, but remarkably tall.

"Can you see anything?" Penny asked as she approached the stranger, her hands shoved in her pockets as if she hadn't been running for her life only a few minutes before.

"I was hoping that it would be clear enough to observe Mars given that it rained earlier this evening, but the L.A. smog has thwarted me yet again."

"Sorry," She said, not really meaning it, but he looked like he might be inclined to help her.

"Were you what the werewolves were chasing just a few minutes ago?"

"Yeah... I'm sort of a vampire."

The man looked at her long enough to roll his eyes, seemingly unimpressed at this declaration, then turned back to his telescope. Penny had gotten quite used to being imposing, and this quick dismissal irked her. "It is common knowledge that people don't leave their homes after sunset in Pasadena unless they have a death wish. The pack is quite vicious."

"So I understand," Penny replied, glancing back toward where she had climbed up from, but without the nerve to go and check it out.

"I'm Sheldon Cooper, p.h.D." he said as he continued to look into the telescope.

"I'm Penny... vampire."


	6. Eugenics

It started out small, just a simple change to the screening requirements for newborn babies. A few extra tests were required before a birth certificate would be issued. It didn't effect either of their lives at the time. Penny was working 60 hours a week as assistant manager at the Cheesecake Factory and Sheldon was deep in research about something or other, Penny didn't care to be bored to death, so she didn't ask.

Over the next few years things continued to change incrementally. Genetic testing had gotten much cheaper and they started taking genetic profiles of all inmates imprisoned for felonies and all admissions to hospital emergency departments.

It came up as a topic during the election, but neither of them had ever been particularly political and so they missed it once again. When the president, who was up for reelection, endorsed the concept of eugenics, the word was suddenly all over the headlines. People were scared. They wanted comfort. The man preaching a better civilization through the use of eugenics seemed to hold the key to ending the ills of society and fighting genetic diseases without the use of pharmaceuticals.

It passed Sheldon and Penny by for so long, but slowly began to creep into their lives. When they prepared to get a marriage license, they had to first go to a session with a genetic counselor.

"It's logical, Penny. They are trying to control the genetic drift of the human population and steer it in a positive direction."

"It doesn't seem like they should have that power. Who's who to decide who's good enough just based on their DNA?"

As much as it worried Penny, she soon forgot it in a haze of wedding preparations and minor dramas surrounding such. The wedding was a week away when their appointment with the counselor finally came up.

"I can't approve your petition for a wedding license," the genetic counselor informed them.

"Why not?" Sheldon asked, his hands clasped in his lap.

"Your familial history of heart issues combined with your high functioning Autism means that you do not fit the criteria for a marriage license in the state of California at this time."

Penny's jaw dropped at the statement. She picked her bag up from the floor where she had placed it, ready to walk out the door that moment. "You mean we can't get married because of that?"

"It would be unconscionable of the state to allow you to marry as it might be seen as condoning procreation between the two of you."

"Penny, we--"

"Shut up, Sheldon," Penny said as she put a hand to his chest and pushed him back in his chair. "Getting married is not a necessary step in getting pregnant."

"No one will issue you a license in this state." The counselor said, reaching for his phone. "Now please leave before I call security to escort you out."

They left, but not without a security officer following them out of the building to make sure that they left without causing too much disturbance.


	7. Petrification

"Don't look her in the eyes," Sheldon called from the sidelines. He looked quite comfortable there.

It was easier said than done. A lifetime of being instructed to look people in the eyes and a handful of acting classes that had beat the same thing into her had trained her eyes to seek out the eyes of another. Avoiding looking at her face and in particular, her eyes, was going to be the hardest part of this fight. Even when she had gotten into fights in high school, Penny had looked her opponent in the eyes. It had scared off many girls in high school, but it was removed from her book of tactics for fear of being petrified.

"Gee thanks," Penny screamed and dodged another swipe from the woman beast.

So Medusa was real. Penny wouldn't have believed it if she hadn't been there in the middle of a marketplace fighting this supposedly mythological creature to the death.

Her opponent was a terrible site behold. Not only was her hair made of snakes, but she was sickly thin and her skin had the pallor of a dying person, no matter how well she hefted that giant sword around. The asps she had for hair weren't really what concerned Penny. Medusa had a sword and eyes that would turn her to stone. Penny had nothing but her wits and some sort of whip.

Weirdly, most of the people there were cheering for Medusa. Better the monster you know than the foreigner who's going to steal this guy you happened to capture who designed an aqueduct for you that you are totally not supposed to have for a really long time. (Penny would be the first to admit that she doesn't know much about history, but Leonard was quick to inform her of this factoid.)

She couldn't see how Medusa could move so quickly in her heavy garments. Penny was finding the Greek summer sun worse than in southern California, and that her clothes were all made of wool didn't help matters. Moving was a feat, as was making sure that she didn't flash anyone when she had to dodge a strike from Medusa. It was a small blessing that the locals hadn't forced her to wear the heavy veil that most of the few women watching the fight were cloaked in.

This was so stupid. She didn't see why she had to fight this beast. Sure, she didn't want Sheldon to be forced to wed some sort of monster, but Penny wasn't too keen on the fight required to keep him from wedded agony.

"You can have him, you know," Penny yelled to her opponent over the din of the crowd. "I don't like him that much."

"This is a fight to the death," Medusa declared and took another swing at Penny.

Penny dodged past Medusa, taking care to stomp on the foot of her garment, up ending her. Medusa went down in the dust, and Penny jumped on top of her. She knocked the sword far from Medusa's hand and looped the whip beneath her neck.

"Do you give up?"


End file.
